


Burnished Shades of Warmth

by EmeraldSage



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: And Alfred and Natalya are Ride or Die, But no Coffee, Children, Coffee, Fall/Halloween Themed, M/M, Pumpkins, RusAme, RusAme Autumn/Halloween Event, RusAme Discord Event, Smiles, So as you can guess, You cannot tell me otherwise, bless you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 13:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12388665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldSage/pseuds/EmeraldSage
Summary: For the RusAme Discord Autumn/Halloween Event on Tumblr.Alfred's reminiscing about his favorite time of year, and Ivan catches him by surprise on his favorite route days before they have to be at the monthly meeting.  Fluff.





	Burnished Shades of Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you like it! Any of the Russian that needs correcting, please let me know! I'm still only two months into my Russian class, and I'd love to hear back from y'all!

            The weather was so indecisive, he thought, as he shrugged on a thicker jacket from the closet after having to retreat back indoors. Given the weekend’s eighty-degree heat, he’d expected the T-shirt he’d worn to be perfectly fine for his day out. Only, when he’d opened the door, he’d been assaulted with a burst of the cold, passing northerly gale, and the slightest scent of frost to come. He’d bolted straight back inside and snagged the remote to check the weather report before he did another damned thing.

            Jacket clad at last – though not his beloved bomber jacket, no matter how much he loved the old thing, it was getting too fragile to keep wearing all the time – he snatched the scarf from its hook near the door and walked out into what should’ve been a typical October gale.

            No matter how many people thought it odd, he would always admit to himself that fall was his favorite season. He could still remember the distant memories of autumn harvests; of kneading the earthy loam – part of him, of his very being – to take what it would yield. Rusty and ruddy leaves fleeing their trees danced in the gentle breeze being pushed around the whole area. The light glimpse of blue in the sky made him smile, even though he had enjoyed the overcast skies, and the time he’d spent around his cozy fireside as a result. Everywhere he went, there were swathes of leaves: rich ruby reds, burnish burnt orange, and the effervescent brilliance of green that remained strewn about despite how late in the season it was.

            The homes along the street all had some form of decorations out and displayed with mixed pride and eagerness for the holiday that was the pinnacle of changing seasons. Some had very little – perhaps they’d changed the doormat, or added an autumn wreath or Halloween decoration to the door; a few might’ve ornamented their stoop with a wealth of pumpkins – but others were totally decked out. There were carved pumpkins, ghosts and bats hanging from rafters and patio pillars, funky signs – and that odd house that had used a projector to project cartoon ghosts on the front door at all hours.

            And while people might not act like it, there was a heavy sense of anticipation for the steadily approaching Halloween. There was an eagerness in people’s eyes, and as a fellow holiday enthusiast himself, he could well understand it.

            Halloween was a gateway holiday in many ways. Not only in the terms of the original celebrations of Samhain, but in more literal terms as well. Halloween was celebrated on the final day of October and as the weeks sped past, Thanksgiving would arrive. Then, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all its shenanigans would arrive, and the whole country would sink into the enchanting warmth of the approaching holiday season. Something about the holiday season seemed to gentle and warm people’s hearts and enshroud everyone in a vast sense of peace and prosperity. It made him glow with warmth just thinking about it.

            A breathe of cold air gusted past him, sneaking down his back and raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He shivered and snuggled more into his scarf and jacket in response. The wind ruffled his hair playfully.

            Laugher broke into his contemplation – light hearted, airy children’s laughter – and he could feel a smile break upon his face as he turned to face the fence at his side. There was the back of an elementary school there – and a lovely little playground that, from what he could see, was filled to the brim with laughing, giggling children. There were a handful of kids swinging on the monkey bars or sliding gleefully down the slide. But the majority of the kids were flailing and shouting cheerfully as they jumped into and rolled around massive piles of burnished, autumn-toned leaves.

            He rested his weight against the fence comfortably, a hand reaching up and fingers lacing around the metal wire as he smiled. He could feel the children’s happiness filling him with an indescribable warmth, even more so than just thinking of the holidays to come. Those children were his. Their laughter, their happiness, their pleasure – it was all his. Their dreams were his future their drive burned in the fire of his soul. And oh _sure_ , not all of them had been born on his shores, but he was America, and they were _here_. The moment they settled their feet on his lands, entrusted their hearts into his care and asked to stay, to find _home_ …they became _his_ , no matter what his government often protested.

            And they were oh _so_ happy – he could practically glow from how much it radiated from within him.

            The school’s bell rang in the distance and he smiled faintly as a chorus of groans arose from the pouting children. But, spirits still high, they chased each other inside even before their teachers could come and herd them into their classrooms. He sighed and watched them go, smile still aglow faintly on his face but heart warm. He would carry that warmth close for as long as he could – as he always did.

            A hand settled on his shoulder and he whirled around with a start, before he caught a glimpse of who had startled him, and swore viscously as he turned to level a glare at the other without having to worry about kids picking up some creative language their parents wouldn’t appreciate later on. The man who startled him laughed, and wrapped an arm around his waist to pull Alfred away from the fence.

            “You ass,” he growled, but didn’t bother trying to squirm out of the tight grip, “Can’t you go one meeting without trying to scare someone?!”

            Ivan, because, of course it was _Ivan_ , smirked and tightened his grip, “Ah,” he said, a patronizing air about him, “but it is, as you would say, моя Лубова, part of the holiday spirit, no? Am I really to blame when you make it such an easy task to startle you?”

            He huffed a soft growl but bit back a retort and accepted the silent chastisement as it was given. Not even thirty years ago and that kind of inattention would’ve been life threatening. Or rather, as life threatening as it could be for a nation.

            After several minutes of light silence, being pulled along the familiar road by a familiar face, Alfred huffed, “You’re early Vanya,” he sighed, but there was a smile curling on his lips, “I wasn’t expecting you until the meeting next week.”

            “My boss decided I could use the extra time off,” the quirk of the elder nation’s lip told Alfred that Ivan’s boss had rather decided to foist his troublemaking nation onto the American President rather than deal with whatever hell Ivan had come up with to make his life ten times more stressful. “I thought you would’ve been more excited to see me, Fedya?”

            “Of course I am!” Alfred blurted, affronted, but Ivan chuckled, and the fingers at his hips brushed the line of skin exposed underneath his jacket with a gentle fondness.

            “Easy, дорогой,” Ivan chuckled, “Tell me of your day, Alfred.”

            Alfred lit up at the thought of the conversation, and all Ivan had to do was relax at the feeling of his lover at his side and loose himself in the younger’s excited babbling.

            Said excited babbling soothed Ivan’s nerves, especially when he realized he could hear the faintest trace of an accent – unable to place quite _where_ it might’ve been from, but discernable if you knew it was there – coloring Alfred’s words. He felt a rush of satisfaction and bone deep pleasure that always accompanied the realization – no matter how often it happened – that Alfred trusted him to let even the most ingrained parts of his mask slip. Trusted him enough to let him know something he was sure even England wasn’t fully aware of.

            To know that Alfred’s first language wasn’t English. That his first language was something that was whispered on the wind, in the way the grass swayed in the breeze or the corn sung under a blue moon; in the way the mountains heaved and gentled and the oceans brushed his coasts with the soft sigh of a lover’s caress. That of the numerous languages his beloved knew, English was amongst the most _recent_ he’d learned.

            Another breeze danced past them, sliding through the space between them and ruffling their clothes, tugging at their hair – albeit with much more enthusiasm around Alfred than with Ivan – and Ivan pulled his lover close, and snagged a flask from a pocket within his coat, taking a generous swig of it. He sighed, almost inaudibly, as he felt the warmth of the vodka he’d stashed within heat his insides with a pleasurable warmth.

            “I thought we were getting coffee,” Alfred said, eyeing the flask suspiciously, and Ivan smirked.

            “We are,” he retorted placidly, but there was the twitch of his lips that made Alfred narrow his eyes. Ivan, of course, caught the slight movement of his counterpart’s wrist before he seamlessly dodged Alfred’s grab. He held the flask tantalizingly out of reach and smirked as Alfred yelped, and wheeled backwards to catch himself before he fell, overbalanced. “Not for you, дорогой,” he chuckled, sipping at the drink and trying not to grin at Alfred’s adorable scowly face.

            “You always find a way to sneak vodka into my country,” the teenage nation groaned, eyeing the flask with a familiar gleam in his eyes and Ivan pointedly kept an eye on those twitching fingers. “Why do you never share it with me?” he demanded.

            “It’s too early for you to start speaking Yupik in public, дорогой,” Ivan smirked, biting back laughter when Alfred flailed and pouted at him, before a gust of wind sent him curling into the warmth of Ivan’s side.

            “I wouldn’t start with Yupik,” Alfred huffed after a moment of pause, and Ivan snorted.

            “No,” he agreed, “you’d cycle through ten other dialects before you get to Yupik, and then you’d stare at anyone who doesn’t understand you and keep switching until they think you’re just a drunken polyglot with way too much time on your hands.”

            Alfred flushed bright red, but didn’t say anything – couldn’t really, because that was exactly what happened when Alfred let himself get completely drunk. Ivan was the only one amongst his nation kin who knew about that particular disaster-in-waiting – even Matt hadn’t been present when he’d gotten _that_ drunk – because that’s how he found out Alfred had been multi-lingual. Of course, he’d gotten drunk before, though only in the presence of his civilians. That’s how the local police stations knew him by name; the charming teenage polyglot who knew more languages than Google translate, and was as adorable as a sleepy koala when he was drunkenly confused at why no one could seem to understand him. Ivan had come to bail him out once that he could remember, and he could still remember the police chief’s expression of disbelief when he realized that the Russian man knew Yupik enough to communicate with the drunken teenager.

            _Most people loose their language when they get drunk_ , the formerly Scottish police chief had commented exasperatedly one evening, _the laddie gains several dozen._

            Ivan laughed and shook the memories from the forefront of his mind, side-eyeing the still brilliantly red face of his lover. “Come,” he said, “let’s find you some coffee,” and then he studied the jacket-clad form of his lover and sighed, “and a new sweater.”

            Alfred eyed him warily, “What’s wrong with my sweater?” he asked indignantly, and dodged a swat aimed his way with a yelp.

            “It’s mine,” his Russian counterpart drawled, eyeing the pale blue cashmere turtleneck visible at the collar pointedly, “Natalya gave it to me for Christmas, if I’m not mistaken.”

            “You’re not,” Alfred said casually, even as Ivan’s pointed stare turned into a pointed glare, “She thinks it looks better on me anyways.”

            The firm grip around his waist was the only clue Alfred had that Ivan had stopped walking alongside him, and he turned, slightly bewildered, to see his lover staring at him incredulously.

            “What?” he asks, half defensive half curious.

            “When did she tell you that?” Ivan asks, and Alfred wonders if that’s real dread in his voice or if he’s imagining things. Though considering Natalya, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was real.

            “When we went shopping after the last meeting in London last month,” he said with a casual shrug, artful in its carelessness. Ivan was still staring at him.

            “…Shopping?” Ivan’s voice was almost _pained_ , how odd.

            “Of course,” Alfred said, shrugging off Ivan’s suddenly loosened grip and strides ahead by a few steps before whirling to face the elder nation, hands on his hips and stride posed, intent. “What do you think we do at our monthly meet ups? Have tea?” Though he didn’t quite admit that they _did_ go out in search of the best _patisserie_ in town to satisfy their sweet tooth before they painted the town red.

            “Monthly…meet ups…” Okay, now Alfred was worried. He turned to eye his suddenly pale lover with no small measure of concern.

            “Are you alright, Ivan?” he asked, and bit his lip when Ivan turned to him, almost mechanically, an odd gleam in violet eyes. He barely restrained the urge to take a step back.

            “You go shopping…every _month_ …with _my sister_.” That wasn’t a question.

            “Ye-es?”

            Ivan huffed, stared at Alfred for a bit, before he nodded and started striding forwards, a purpose in his step. Alfred took a few rapid steps backwards, but it was of no use.

            “Wait, what are you – VANYA PUT ME DOWN!” his voice changed, mid-sentence, from confusion to a halfway shriek as Ivan snagged him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder. “PUT ME DOWN, GODDAMN IT VANYA!”

            He swore loudly as Ivan walked calmly down the street, far too used to holding the squirming, swearing superpower splayed across his shoulder than Alfred would’ve liked him to be, and tried to kick the bastard. He also, pointedly ignored the stares of the passerby walkers and the occasional motorist who nearly crashed into a traffic light when he saw the scene they were making.

            He heard children laughing and gossiping curiously not far from them too, and felt himself pout, even as the warmth from earlier returned twice as strong inside him. He still wasn’t letting Ivan get away with pulling this shit without any warning.

            He’d never gotten his coffee, either, damn it.


End file.
